Local News

It’s official. The 200 Corridor will get a new 40-acre park, but when it will be open to visitors is unknown.

Pat Gabriel, president of Parks and Recreation Advisory Council (PRAC), said it would be more than a year before the design plans for the property get under way. “It takes awhile,” she said to get a park “online.” The design process has been budgeted for October 2010.

Although those walking the first lap at Friday evening’s Relay for Life at West Port High School wore the same dark purple T-shirt saying they were cancer survivors, each person’s story was different.

It was 1987 when Odin Olson, On Top of the World, first learned he had lymphoma. Chemotherapy was necessary. He has had several relapses in the past but now he is in remission.

Duane Ulery moved to Oak Run two weeks ago. As he walked the first lap, his wife Janet snapped photos of her husband with the plan to send them to back to his doctor in Ohio.

When students from Hammett Bowen Jr. Elementary School joined hands Friday to sing “It’s a Small World,” there was a new awareness in their voices.

They had just concluded a week-long study of 30 of the world’s countries that culminated in the school’s second annual multi-cultural day where they shared, in costume and song, what they had learned.

Corridor businesses Thursday got into the spirit of the fight against cancer as they decorated their store fronts with purple, greeted customers dressed in purple, and in many other ways helped to “paint the town purple.”

The spirit of the day is expected to move right into the upcoming American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life May 1 and 2 at West Port High School.

The Relay for Life is an all-night event used to remember, honor, and raise money for cancer victims.

The theme for this year is “Surfing for a Cure to Wipe Out Cancer.”